Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present the exhibition Pet Cemetery by Erika Verzutti. The show transforms the exhibition space into a graveless cemetery, in which twenty-two new animal-shaped sculptures are set atop pedestals or arranged on the floor. For Verzutti, the “cemetery” is a “pretext to exercise different styles, reflect on cultural representation and on the use of bronze, common to the arts and to gravestones.”
The artist has broken away from formal practice to reveal the structure of her artworks and incorporate accidents such as welds, scratches, splatters and paint runs. By recording the accidents in her creative process, the artist absorbs inabilities and peripheral happenings that would be neutralized by habit. Some of the sculptures shown, such as Egito [Egypt] and Marrakesh, are the unfolding of an investigation Verzutti began in 2006, when she started using fruits and vegetables as molds for casting metal. Here, the stability of the bronze is diminished by its combination with a variety of less-noble materials, including wool knitting, cold porcelain, stones and concrete. The artist also uses some of the objects employed during her creative process, such as brushes and easels.
For Verzutti, the diversity of materials allowed for the incorporation of artworks by other artists, giving rise to five collaborative works. Leda Catunda has constructed – with her soft painting – a lake for the bronze frog; Efrain Almeida has collaborated in Infante [Infant] with a baby chicken sculpted from wood; Tiago Carneiro da Cunha worked together with the artist to create a zombie chicken in ceramic; a sculpture by Alexandre da Cunha made of tin cans and concrete has been transformed into a support for the bronze Bull Head; and Tonico Lemos Auad has used graphite stones to create a head for the sculpture that represents a horse.
Still in 2008, the artist will be participating in the show Lives become Form, at MOT – Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo, curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Also in Japan she will be taking part in a residency of two months at Tokyo Wonder Site. In 2007, the first monograph on her work was released by Cobogó publishers.
